Apparatuses for stuffing a meat or sausage mass into sausage skin sections for subjection to a subsequent treatment process, such as a maturing and/or cooking process, are well known. For a subsequent treatment of the food, in which additions, such as spices, act from the outer side and impart flavors to the meat or sausage mass, it has generally been required to apply the spices manually after the sausage skin has been stuffed. For this purpose, the sausage skin has been sliced in the longitudinal direction immediately after being stuffed in order to make the outer side of the meat or sausage mass located therein accessible. After the spices have been applied, the sausage skin is closed again.
As an alternative to the above procedure, a strand of the particular meat or sausage mass is laid in a pressing mold which has been lined beforehand with a sausage skin section open on the longitudinal side. A strip coated with spices on the side facing the meat or sausage mass is placed onto the mass in the pressing mold. The sausage skin which is open on the longitudinal side is closed and the contents of the pressing mold compacted by means of a punch.
The abovementioned manual processes are awkward and time-consuming.
DE 103 57 688 describes an apparatus which permits a strip coated with additions to be introduced continuously during the stuffing of a meat or sausage mass into a skin, it not being required to open the sausage skin in the longitudinal direction. In the apparatus, the strip which is coated with additions is fed in through the outer chamber of a double-walled stuffing tube. As the strip is fed in, friction against the walls of the stuffing tube causes some of the additions to be detached, some of which, in turn, remain stuck to the walls and increasingly clog up the chamber. In order to prevent clogging-up, and for hygiene reasons, the chamber has to be cleaned at regular intervals. However, the cleaning of the tubular chamber is difficult because of the small width thereof in comparison to the length and requires the use of a suitable tool or of a cleaning bath.